Well after a lot of trash talking from golf critics and from my managers here at Sportbet.com! I had the luck of not having to work until late today, so I was wide awake and watched most of the golf. The Europeans came out will all guns blazing and started to grow as a team, so much for the US having the best players in the world when then are not able to preform as a Team. It was another great win for Europe and even more special for Darren Clarke, Padraig Harrington and Paul McGinley since they all played on home soil, and for Clarke it was an emotional week, he proved that he was worthy of the Captains pick.
At the start of the week all eyes were on Ian Woosnam for his use of the picks on Darren Clarke and Lee Westwood, but these two players managed to get seven points between them, which was nearly as many points as the entire US team got for the week. Darren Clarke played with his heart on his sleeve and pulled of an emotional win over Zach Johnson, which left him with three wins from three matches for the week. A perfect record and after all he has been through I don’t think that anyone would have expected him to play as well as he did.
What was no shock was that Tiger Woods was the US player with the most points he managed to rack up three points from five matches, Sergio Garcia was the leading European with four points from five matches. What was a shock was that the none of the following players won any of their matches, from Europe Robert Karlsson, Padraig Harrington and Paul McGinely. Paul McGinely made birdie on 18 today and his rival had an 25 footer or so to tie McGinely, but out of the blue came a larger gentlemen in the nude and gave the 18th green a victory and then jumped into the lake left of the green. The crowd was going wild and some were laughing, but to me it was a sad reminder how gold lacks in security and gave me flash backs of the us running onto the green when Justin Leonard made a put against Jose Maria Olazabal before the European player had even stroked his putt. So McGinely looked around and then showed us all what the Ryder Cup and golf is all about, the love for the game and it being a gentlemens sport. He picked us the ball and offered the US player a half on the hole and which meant that their match was a tie.
On the US team there were a few players whom did not win any matches at all, they did tie but no outright wins. These were the US players that were left looking on the outside in, Brett Wetterich, Phil Mickelson, David Toms, Chris Dimarco, Vaughn Taylor, Chad Campbell, J.J Henry, for players like Mickelson, Toms and Dimarco not to win a match simply blew my mind, and probably the mind of US captain Tom Lehman and golfers around the world.
The land of the good ol Guinness and the luck of the Irish was good to the European team, and not so good to the US. Everyone was expecting the US to beat the Europeans this time around, since they were loaded with top ranked players but that did not have an effect on the European squad which won 18 ½, 9 ½ the same score which they won with two years ago.
So what can we say that we might have learned from this years Ryder Cup well to me it looks pretty bright and simple, the Europeans seem to rise to the level of the Competition, or could it still be that the Americans are still taking the European side for granted? It could also be the fact that a lot of European players have gone through a lot more match play experience throughout their golfing years. Personally I have this gut feeling that the European players want to play better, because they are getting a chance to beat the best players in the world, some of these players don’t have the chance to play against players like Tiger and Mickelson since they play on the European Tour and not the PGA Tour.
Overall thoughts on this week, well the level of golf produced by both teams was amazing, if the US would hit a shot to 6 feet Europe would respond by hitting it to 4 feet the same went the other way around. There were two hole in ones this week both on the same hole, and this morining Scott Verplank was the first US player to have a hole in one in the history of the Ryder Cup.
Finally to finnish of with a quick fun note, and that note being one involving Tiger Woods and his caddie Steve Williams after Tiger hit his approach shot to the 7th green. Tiger asked his caddie to rinse of the mud off his 9 iron, Williams went above and beyond on the call of duty and dipped the club into the river. What followed was to me one of the funniest scenes I have ever seen, Williams slipped on a rock and it was either him going in the drink or the club, he decided to give up Woods 9 iron. At first it looked like Williams was not sure what to do, Tiger then realized what had just happened and looked into the merky water, glanced at Williams and simply laughed.
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The golf legend Bryon Nelson died at 94 on September 26th, 2006. Known as golf’s elegant ‘Lord Bryon’ whos eleven consecutive victories in 1945 stand and probably always will as one of sports most amazing records. Not only did he manage to win eleven consecutive tournaments that year he was able to rack up a total of 18 wins for the year, something that no golf has ever even come close to dreaming of. Lord Bryon was known for his graceful swing and his gentle manner, I think if we say that he had the greatest year in professional golf history in 1945 with his 18 wins, I think that falls short there are no words that I can think of that will describe that year other than one of a kind.
So yesterday was just simply another Saturday here in Costa Rica, so my day personally started of feeling tired from playing golf and partying away Friday night. I was scheduled to be in the 
